The rodeo clown was in great form. Playing to a raucous, full house, he whipped the crowd into a frenzy. One of the many props at his disposal was a dummy depicting the president of the United States, propped up by a broom handle. The crowd knew what was going to happen and couldn’t wait to see it.

A local newspaper described it thusly: “Then the bull saw the (presidential) dummy. He tore into it, sending the rubber mask flying halfway across the sand as he turned toward the fence, sending cowboys scrambling up the fence rails, hooking one with his horn and tossing him off the fence.”

The year? 1994. The place? Woodstown, New Jersey. The president being ridiculed? George H.W. Bush. The outrage by politicians, the media and the civil rights establishment? Nonexistent.

Such is life in our America of double standards.

It’s a safe assumption that most Americans – apart from those who read that original Philadelphia Inquirer story – never heard of the 1994 rodeo incident. Millions more know of the recent, nearly identical display at a Missouri rodeo that targeted Barack Obama, who – in the eyes of some – is the lone figure on today’s political scene who should never be subject to criticism or mockery.

Within days, the clown – identified as Tuffy Gessling – issued an apology. Then he was fired and banned from rodeos for life. The Missouri Rodeo Association apologized, and its chairman resigned. Governor Jay Nixon called the show “disrespectful and offensive.” The creaking NAACP, always willing to demonstrate its increasingly shrill irrelevance, called the rodeo act a “hate crime” and demanded the FBI and Secret Service investigate. And to make the affair a complete paradigm of 21st century political correctness run amok, the Missouri State Fair Commission decided that all future rodeo participants – everyone from ticket-takers to bull-riders –must receive “sensitivity training.”

How Maoist of them.

Exactly when was it decreed that Barack Obama should be immune from ridicule, mockery and other treatment that’s a staple of American political life? Who carried that 11th tablet down from the mountaintop?

We’ve seen this hands-off demand regarding Obama before. His 20-year religious dalliance with radical, America-hating racist Jeremiah Wright was ruled out-of-bounds for discussion. His description of his maternal grandmother as a “typical white person” was similarly hushed. His frequent, lavish vacations and near-fanatical obsession with golf – he played more rounds in four years than George W. Bush did in eight – are quietly ignored, if not admired. Any opposition to the ruinous, destructive ObamaCare is described as “racist,” even as the Administration unilaterally issues waivers, rule changes and delays because the plan is a chaotic, unworkable mess that will only get worse as it gets forced onto us.

Naturally, the Missouri rodeo affair was distilled to the same base as every criticism or ridicule of Obama: racism. It’s been a constant theme underlying his time in office: criticize him, mock him, do anything but admire him and you are labeled a racist, no questions asked and no explanations allowed. It’s a handy, effective way of chilling the opposition, which is fatal for a society founded on the right of dissent.

For once, Rush Limbaugh (speaking of irrelevant entities) had it exactly right. The bombastic talk show host said the reaction to the Missouri rodeo clown was precisely the type of hysterical overreaction radical Muslims have to the publications of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Fortunately, there have been no death threats aimed at the rodeo clown (not yet, anyway). But in an age where a political figure practically represents a deity to his admirers, you never know how far idolatry will be taken.